Hannah’s Story

I am a mom to a 9 year old, and I'm also a certified full spectrum doula and certified lactation counselor and part of my story is why I got into that work. I was a teen parent, the sole single parent from the beginning. I was also a gestational carrier a few years ago.

I moved to Maine, 9 months pregnant, with my mom to be closer to her. As grateful as I was that I could have that support, very soon within a few days of giving birth, she went right back to work. I was left alone as a teen mom who didn't really have any resources, friends, or any other family in Maine. I was left alone with my newborn and it wasn't easy to try to navigate breastfeeding him, healing my own body, and going through this transitional period, this identity shift within myself. Not only was I going through an identity shift into adulthood, but it was also an identity shift into parenthood, which was extremely hard to navigate, essentially alone.

It would have been really nice if my mom could have had paid family leave to be able to stay home and help me and support me in that way.

It definitely put a lot of strain on our relationship, having me dealing with sleep deprivation, and feeling really touched out from feeding my son through my body for a little over a year, and feeling isolated, not really having connections in this area. My one person was working every day on weekdays. It was an isolating period, and is why I trained to be a doula and a certified lactation counselor. I've become that support person for other people. I think there's a lot of value to being able to have paid leave for family members, whether it be partners, grandparents or you know anybody that is a part of that birthing person's life to be able to have the opportunities to help care for them.

If my mom had been able to afford time off and been supported to do that, I think I wouldn't have had such extreme sleep deprivation, because maybe she could have helped me more at night. I did end up having a postpartum mood disorder, and that was really hard and impacted my ability to function, and my ability to care for my son in the way that he should have been able to be cared for. That was really difficult.

This is a huge conversation for birthing people, around how to navigate paid leave, because a lot of the leave is unpaid.

It shouldn’t be this way… It should be automatic that people have paid leave. It is something that's on the front of people’s minds, and that shouldn't be what they have to worry about or stress about, whether or not they're going to be alone.

Have a story to tell? Visit our paid leave story form and join the conversation!